


The White Cliffs of Ios

by Nabielka



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe, Freedom, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, slave revolt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 08:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11665353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nabielka/pseuds/Nabielka
Summary: A slave revolt in Ios has overthrown the masters. Now free, Kallias waits in a citadel which cannot defend itself long, and thinks of one not there with him.





	The White Cliffs of Ios

The cliffs of Ios could hold off intruders, had said the old king and many a general and Exalted before him, quite as well as a Veretian fort. The palace had been built on the peak, with the town sprawling out all along the hill; any invaders would have to fight in the city or else climb the hill cliffs at the back of the palace, so that the defenders would find it easy to stay put and repel their attackers. 

They might have had the right of it, but all the same, it would take only a matter of days for the armies of the kyros of Kesus, or else forces brought over from the Isthima - alerted perhaps by some communications by fire further down the coast, which they could not control – to take it back against such meagre resources that they had, this servile group that had rebelled against the eternal order of the world. 

For what they had, in terms of fighters, was only the former slaves of the pits, and the strong ones of the mines by the capital, and many more who, like him, could merely serve to stave off the end for a little longer. And in the bedrooms of the citadel, there lay cooling the corpses of those who had ruled over their every breath for years, who in life had been killing them slowly, and who in death would be the real cause of that one final death to come. 

Now, in his twenty-eighth hour of freedom, Kallias stood high on the tower of Ios and looked out below. 

The town was dark. The inhabitants had snuffed out their candles hours before, and from here, all Kallias could make out was the dark shapes of some of their houses. It would not have done him any good, in any case. He had never been out on the streets by himself, carefree, stopping at any market stall he pleased, buying some fish or some roast chestnuts there. Perhaps as a boy he had run through the streets of some other town or village, without taking sufficient care to avoid brushing into others, but all that was part of a life he had lost a long time ago, when the high walls of the gardens had closed upon him.

Erasmus had wanted to be in the world. 

He placed his hand on the windowsill, and then the other over it. If he closed his eyes, he could just about imagine that it was Erasmus’ hand holding his, just as soft as his own and of much the same shade, for it had only ever been Erasmus’ hair that the masters had wanted altered by the sun. They might have had this moment, might have had moment after moment, here, walking the corridors with their necks unbent, might have kissed freely and openly and loved each other while they could. 

But his own touch had never made him burn as Erasmus’ had done, and he could not fool himself. It had taken some time after Kastor-Exalted had first taken him for him to grow bold, and though it was unthinkable that Erasmus could treat him so, it was some comfort to think that if Kallias was good and did his duty, he might see him the next day. It seemed unthinkable that Kastor-Exalted could not see it; that the attendants, who might once have been in his place, could not see it; but he had lain in a Prince’s bed and tried to block this out with dreams of another, and yet no harm had come to him. 

So he had dared more: to lie alone at night and shift his hand beneath the covers, though he was to be untouched by his own hand or another’s save by the order of his master. His eyes on the door, his mouth firmly closed, moving as little as possible, he had thought of Erasmus. 

It had not been enough. It had tided him over, night to day, but never could he quite imagine how Erasmus might move his hand, what it might feel like to have him in his bed, to talk with and hold and to love as fully as nobody ever had, with nobody to think anything amiss. He, who had ever been Nereus’ master pupil, the one to emulate, the perfect slave, was unconvincing even to himself. 

And Erasmus, whom he had last seen with his lovely face contorted with horror, his shining eyes wide, was gone and lost to him. 

If he were to walk across the tower, he might look down into the dark water; if he strained his ears, perhaps he might even make out – or think he could – the waves breaking on the rocks. But he didn’t know how deep the waters were, or whether the children would play there in daytime, as they had in the songs of Alcestis, when the boats came in and mother was reunited with daughter. He didn’t even know what time the fishing boats went out, let alone when they returned. 

Scarcely a few days ago, the Veretian ambassador had sailed for home with all the ceremony the Court granted a new ally. By now he might have docked. Who knew, now, where Erasmus, the golden lion’s badge he had worn pinned to his chiton since early adolescence ripped from him by Kallias’ hand – though not, alas, in joy at its newfound uselessness when attached to a free man – might have found himself? 

He had wanted to cross the ocean. He had meant: to go to Isthima, of which the songs he had learned spoke, where Iphigenia had waited as Kallias now waited, for doom or salvation. To travel, to meet people and speak with them, to learn what tales they told children at night in Thrace and how lovers danced around the fire in Mellos. Instead, he was kept at his master’s house, to be herded, at his master’s desire, from one palace to another. 

If he had stayed, they might now be in each other’s arms. They could kiss and nobody would care, unless it was to distract them while they were on watch, waiting for veterans of the Delphan campaign to come and put an end to those few happy days of their lives. But what was it for a slave to share his body with another when he had already committed the cardinal crime of raising a hand against his master, whom all slaves, so they said, lived only to submit and worship?

If he had stayed, he would now be dead. The snippets Kallias had overheard, serving in Kastor-Exalted’s chambers, as suspicious as a footstool, had been clear enough. Those who wore the Crown Prince’s badge were to come to harm. And so they had: all, they said, had killed themselves of grief. 

This had raised not a little consternation among those left in the slave quarters. They might have all been kept apart in different training gardens, but the realities of palace slavery meant that the slaves of various households passed each other frequently on errands, were kept prostate outside the same doors. Besides, they had all seen other households broken up when their masters had died – most closely that of the Lady Hypermenestra, whom the King and Kastor-Exalted had mourned so, and who had died not long after Kallias had first been brought to the palace - and while many feared for their futures and some may even have mourned with no less sincerity than the royal house, no slave killed themselves of heartache over a former master. 

Kallias, his gaze fixed on the ground, bent prostate before Kastor-Exalted’s door, in a position he had been in many times before, and in which the careless words of others had drifted into his ears, had felt more disquiet than most. 

But still, he had not been the only one. Unnoticed by the masters, rumours had spread. Soldiers had come to Adrastus wanting the names of Damianos-Exalted’ slaves; Adrastus too was dead. The King was dead; the Crown Prince too; a number of the court declared traitors and executed; more fleeing to their provincial homes. Everywhere only death and fear.

If one was to die, at least one might die free. 

The songs spoke of the free women of Dice, who, married off to Patrans in more adversarial times, had slain them in bed for their honour and their state’s. Being raised free, they must have been strong and trained in combat and sure of their purpose, but then to kill a man could be accomplished even by one trained only to please. Kastor-Exalted and the other masters had died in their sleep. 

Kallias and the other slaves were to meet with a grimmer fate. 

But oh, what joy it was to be free, even only here in the palace and still not yet free to go out into the world. A joy to cover up, though it was high summer, in the longer chitons they had found; a joy not to apply paint and let spots and cold sores come out and let themselves grow ugly. Oh, if only Erasmus were here to see it! 

Others were to go out in search of a blacksmith who was to come with his tools and liberate them all from the physical trappings that would show off what their role had been to all. Then, it was planned, they were all to leave, to flee far from the capital by ship and by land to start new lives. 

But as of yet there was no blacksmith. 

They laughed, and received the most basic of training from the fighters, but still they were unmistakeably marked out as slaves. Anyone who saw them would look first for their master, and, not finding one, they would be immediately spotted as runaways. And they had all heard what happened to runaways. 

Any hour now a kyros’ army might appear on the horizon. And then… The fate of a slave who had displeased his master was harsh, but it was not drawn out. The fate of a slave who had turned against his duty, his nature, had raised even a hand against his master, was to be denied even a moment of mercy. 

Kallias closed his eyes against the dark, and wrapped one arm around his chest. Erasmus had held him a few times, a little like that. The closest thing to intimacy they had been allowed was a brush of cheek against cheek, so very little. But standing there on the tower, Kallias would have settled for even that, to have Erasmus in his arms, happy and free, for all the moments of freedom they could snatch away from the cruel world.


End file.
